Explication of Emily Dickenson's “There's a certain Slant of light”

Your Name
Subject and Section
Professor’s Name
Date
Explication of Emily Dickenson's “There's a certain Slant of light”
The poem, “There's a certain Slant of light” by Emily Dickenson, presents the author’s experience of despair and mental attitude towards this painful feeling. In the poem, the content can have variable meaning since there are multiple instances of ambiguous phrases as well as contradictory words that affects the understanding of the readers but the most readily observed theme of the poem is about the negative emotions. Dickenson uses common places and natural events as metaphors to serve as baseline information to easily connect her thoughts with the imagination of the readers. This illustrates the commonness of her pain that is also commonly experienced by other people; thus, the poem raise empathy to Dickenson’s feelings and the relatable gravity of her suffering.
At every stanza of the poem, Dickenson uses punctuations such as commas and dashes. As the poem is read out loud, the flow of the reading is being slowed down due to these punctuations. This way, the reader is forced to stop and reflect on the vague phrases. Generally, Dickenson’s use of ambiguous and contradicting language throughout the poem show how the poem can reveal a different version of reality depending on mental attitude.
Although her poem can be interpreted as the feeling of despair through loneliness, the pessimistic mental attitude of Emily Dickenson, as well as the readers, when interpreting the poem should be further studied since it can focus the readers interpretation on the poem against the contradictions and vagueness. In this paper, the explication of the poem shall be based on pessimism that reveals authors feelings in the content, imagery, language and syntax.
In the first stanza, Dickenson is fairly straightforward with characterization of her negative feelings by establishing the context and visual elements of the setting. She mentioned the specific season “Winter Afternoons-,” which in itself give readers a relatable sense of bone-piercing coldness as the sun is going down, and “Cathedral Tunes,” which presents a common structure that have solemn characteristics that is known to all. The reader can create a visual imagery about the nature of uncontrollable passage of time towards the end. The afternoon setting shows that the sun is about to set while the melancholic or sad cathedral tunes creates a music relating to a sendoff of the dead. The starting phrase, “There’s a certain Slant of light” show the visible and slow movement towards the end or death. Dickenson described the slanted light as “oppressive” since it is an inescapable and common quality of the natural world and life that is consistently happening every day. She used this comparison to show that pain, suffering and negative emotions are common to all but the reaction of an individual towards these feelings are different depending on the mental attitude.
Additionally, the syntax of the first stanza includes dashes and commas that establishes the language and rhythm. The placing of punctuations is important since it can give more emphasis and description about what negative feelings Dickenson is experiencing, especially the words “winter afternoons” and “cathedral tunes.” The reader needs more time to understand the pessimistic nature of these words in the point of view of Dickenson. Winter afternoon can be misinterpreted as a positive phenomenon since this time of day is where the snow is mostly stable and the sun setting has it’s own aesthetic beauty while the cathedral tune can be misinterpreted as uplifting since one nature of religious songs are meant to inspire the people in believing the good teachings of the church.
In the second stanza, Dickenson describes the gravity of her negative feelings that she could not understand. First, it is because of the non-physical nature of her pain, “no Scar,” which imply an internal pain. She presented her internal struggles that has no rational meaning. The second stanza creatively connect with the people because of the ...